'High Tide' concert canceled for Memorial Day weekend

Adele in Ocean City? The British superstar was just one of the names floated by promoter Tom Russell when he first started talking about staging a new music festival in Ocean City.(Photo: Kevin Winter/The (Salisbury, Md.) Daily Times)

OCEAN CITY, MD – A long-planned country music festival scheduled for Memorial Day weekend in Ocean City has been canceled.

Event promoter Tom Russell said factors in his decision to scrap the four-day festival included the challenge of booking top-tier musical acts, and a lack of support from radio stations in the Baltimore and Washington metro areas.

His cancellation notice came in a Nov. 25 email to Lisa Mitchell, Ocean City's lead staffer for special events. Russell wrote to Mitchell that it's unlikely he will ask for an extension, and plans to walk away from the project with "an apology and sincere thanks for working with us."

Russell said the most serious conflict for the May 30-June 2 event was a NASCAR race at Dover during the same weekend.

"This event draws the same crowd as our proposed country event and fills the Ocean City hotels and condos with race fans," he wrote. "We are unable to assemble a talent lineup on this specific date that is strong enough to ensure a successful event in its first year."

The event at one point was going to be called the High Tide Music Festival. The group behind the festival, Founders Entertainment, decided to find a new event name in January 2012 when a digital squatter bought the website address they wanted and was "holding it hostage," Russell said at the time.

Plans for the festival first took shape in October 2011. The resort's Town Council at the time gave the green light to start planning for what was then going to be a two-day event for June 2012. Russell floated a bold list of possible rock headliners, including Adele, Paul Simon, Tom Petty and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, among others. Single-day tickets would have cost $75-$90.

However, by December 2012, High Tide switched from rock to country. And, saying he needed time to book the most popular music acts possible, Russell asked resort officials to bump the show into summer 2014.

Councilman Brent Ashley at that time asked Russell what assurances he could give that he would be able to follow through on in 2014, since it was his second time rescheduling the event. Russell replied that Founders Entertainment wouldn't bail on the 2014 date because it would now have ample time to bring in the best possible acts.

Russell said he had experience as a promoter for other music festivals, including Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and the Governor's Ball Music Festival in New York. He told resort officials that Founders Entertainment would be investing $5 million in the project.

"If you put that amount of money into something and you fail, people don't take you so seriously anymore," he said at a council meeting. "So we're all-in on this."